Elana Kagan

Senator Sessions, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, seemed pretty exercised in his questioning of Solicitor General Kagan, and the results were. . . pretty unremarkable.

He spent most of his time on the military recruitment issue (which Patrick Leahy already addressed) and didn’t manage to cover much new ground. Elena Kagan is opposed to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. We get it. So is 75% of the American public. He keeps insisting that the military didn’t have access to students at Harvard Law School, but unfortunately for him, that’s totally false.

In general, Senator Sessions seemed a little confused about the details of the dispute around the Solomon Amendment. Conservatives are clearly still looking for an attack that will stick. This ain't it.

Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee tried to smear Elana Kagan all day by attacking her mentor and hero, Thurgood Marshall, as a “liberal activist judge.” Senator Jon Kyl in particular complained that Marshall’s judicial philosophy was “not what [he] would consider mainstream.” Really? Let’s not forget: this was the man who won the breakthrough victory for civil rights in Brown v Board of Education. Justice Marshall spent his quarter century tenure on the Supreme Court protecting the rights of privacy, equal opportunity, and a fair trial. According to Senate Republicans, that record makes Marshall a radical judicial activist.

Can the Republican Senators really be opposed to the legacy of Thurgood Marshall? If so, what in the world could they be for?

The day Justice John Paul Stevens announced his retirement, Senate Republican leadership vowed to obstruct the confirmation of whoever was nominated to replace him. Today, Republican Senators who had previously praised nominee Elena Kagan’s intellect and qualifications have become strikingly lesssupportive.

And now we have evidence that the obstruction of Obama’s Supreme Court pick, as a way of delaying progress on policy initiatives like climate change regulation and immigration reform, has been the GOP’s explicit strategy all along.

The crux of the GOP's strategy is to use Obama's nominee to wedge vulnerable Democratic senators away from the party, and drag the confirmation fight out until the August congressional recess, to eat up precious time Democrats need to round out their agenda.

"[I]t wouldn't take much GOP resistance to push a final vote into early August," Levey advised. "And, look, the closer we could get it to the election, frankly, the better. It would be great if we could push it past the August recess because that forces the red and purple state Democrats to have to go home and face their constituents."

Levey acknowledged that a filibuster likely won't last--that Obama's nominee, now known to be Solicitor General Elana Kagan, will almost certainly be confirmed. But he hammered home the point to Republicans that there's value in mischaracterizing any nominee, and dragging the fight out as long as possible, whether or not Obama's choice is particularly liberal.

This is frustrating, but not surprising, from a party that has recently displayed an unparalleledmastery of the Senate’s rules for delay. If they’re willing to stall the confirmation of one of their own party’s most prominent spokespeople, why would they not draw out the confirmation process for an obviously qualified Supreme Court nominee?